Footnote References - Background

The footnote references in Being and Becoming Kachin are extensive. This was considered important not least because the book proposes a number of new ways of thinking about the 'Kachin' region, broadly defined. However, footnoting alone obviously does not ensure wide access to the materials referenced. As many of the references are to sources that are rare or difficult to access, the purpose of this page is to make some of those sources more widely available. In this way, it is hoped that the debate around these issues can also be extended. Below, some of the key sources used in each chapter are presented, following the structure of the book. However, the whole range of materials found on this site collectively informed both the general approach and its detailed interpretations. For Jinghpaw language references, many of these will shortly be available through The Kachin Library, created by Nbyen Dan Hkung Awng. The materials presented are not all encompassing but merely those permitted by the kind generosity of Pungga Ja Li, Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove, and others as indicated. Permission to reproduce any of these materials must be sought from the appropriate copyright owner directly.

Introduction

No specific sources defined the argument in the Introduction. However, a critical element was obviously the process of inter-cultural and intra-cultural translation undertaken in relation to the historical photographic images of the James Henry Green Collection and the materials created by the Yup Uplift Committee with Pungga Ja Li. A number of articles outline the development of this relationship and its continued evolution. See List of Publications on this website. In addition, the Research Notes page presents the conclusions reached in the period 1996-9 in its 'raw' state, which are referred to briefly in pp.27-9.

Chapter 1: Global Histories, Local Exclusions

In 1999, upon returning to the UK from Burma I worked alongside Pascal Khoo Thwe, Kiriyama Prize winning author of From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey (Harper Collins, 2002) on an archival research project in the India Office Collections of the British Library. For Pascal, the time in the library took him off on a historical journey in which he shaped and refined his interaction with the past, which later became public with such emotional power in his book. For me, it was a journey to explore every nook and cranny of the warren-like archive to see where, how and why historical documentation about Burma's border regions had been stashed, forgotten, collected, weeded and submerged. This was vital as a precursor to understanding whether or not the prevalent local perception of the 1990s that I had heard repeatedly was true - this was an area without a recoverable history, 'nothing' ever having been written about it. Of course - it is not. The outcome of this project was an extensive Guide to Sources in the India Office Records (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2008; see Publications). The archival framework of this chapter and the approach to colonial archives is made clear in that publication.

A further critical aspect of this chapter, however, is the arguments made in relation to the existence of a broadly common Jinghpaw ritual system and distinctive understanding of rights over land. In the case of the former, the ideas were informed by the accounts of ritual practices and their interpretation made by Singpho informants in early 19th century Assam and their still-readable relation to many of those rituals documentated on this site, even as far as the China border. In the case of the relationship to land, the ideas were greatly influenced by the study of ritual practices in which purification of territory takes place. Below are some of the materials that informed this interpretation, although the multiple audio-visual recordings of the Yup Uplift Committee collectively informed this interpretation.

The following images demonstrate some of the ways in which territory can be demarcated and differentiated, in this case into ritually purified areas and those that lie 'beyond', as described on p.81, fn.147. More of these images can be found on the Manau page. See also Research Notes on Laban and Numshang.

A full list of sources in the India Office Records in the British Library is available in the Guide detailed above. However, below are some of the handlists that I collated from the Proceedings indexes in the Bengal Secret Department, 1825-32 that are relevant. The Proceedings contain detailed running accounts of communications between the various departments and their field officers.

Chapter 2: Ritual, Ideology and Politics

Discussion of the Tawn Nat forms an important part of this chapter. Below is a rather head-spinning video of a Tawn Nat offering performed by Dumsa Kaba Nga La Zau La in Myitkyina in 1998. Following that is an audio file for comparison of another Tawn Nat recitation made by Dumsa Sumwum Naw Htoi in 1992, with a partial transcript of the recording. Finally, a Jinghpaw language document created by the descendants of the Tsumhka Duwa relating their family history is detailed. All of these sources have been referred to on page 119, footnote 122 and following. Footnote 25 also references the myth of Chyup Chya Nga, the origin myth of gumlao. A transcript of a Chyup Chya Nga recitation by Dumsa Hkan Naw is included, along with a file of the original notes made when translating this recitation into English. Also included is a transcript of a Hkanghpoi ritual, referred to on page 130, footnote 155, with additional photographs included in the slideshow, below right. The original audio recordings and transcripts were created by Pungga Ja Li and the Yup Uplift Committee, Myitkyina. Photographs have been attributed as appropriate.

These images show some interesting alternative uses of the textile that is also found around the Tawn Nat hkung-ri, as referred to in footnote 155 on page 130. The cloth clearly has associations with providing a protective barrier against malevolent spirits. Likewise, a special numbat cloth, or cloth used to carry a baby with strong similarities to contemporary Hkamti Shan men's skirtcloths is also often a common dowry gift.

Chapter 3: Boundaries and Borders

Chapter 3 makes the case that the political changes affecting the borderworld in the east of the 'Kachin' region, where Jinghpaw influence also extended into Yunnan, led to a consolidation of a traditional form of cross-group affinal kinship building, which in turn provided the ideological underpinnings subsequently for a multi-group, modern 'Kachin' identity. This was effected through a ritual system in which building cross-group genealogical parallels was important. This interpretation was developed following the detailed study of ritual practices that are shown elsewhere in this website. For example, the relationship with Lawngwaw traditions becomes apparent in the documentation of Hpauhkang Naw's funeral on the Tsu Dumsa page. It was also influenced by involvement with various textile projects supported by Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove, in which traditions of manufacture etc. for the different modern variants of local dress styles were explored, and the relationships between them explained by local weavers. The projects took place during 1996-9 under the direction of Dr Elizabeth Dell and in 2001-2 with Lisa Maddigan as project manager.

For information about Hkanghpoi, page 189 fn. 162 see above on this page. For information about Manau, page 190 fn. 172, see the relevant page of this website. For details of Enriquez' Rectruitment Lectures, see Chapter 4: Militarisation and the Contest of Modernities, below.

Chapter 4: Militarisation and the Contest of Modernities

One of the most important sources used in this chapter was Jinghpaw Shi Laika (Jinghpaw News), the first Jinghpaw language newspaper. These documents have recently been scanned by Nbyen Dan Hkung Awng as part of the Kachin Library project. When this website is republished and the materials are made accessible, it will be notified here. In addition, another major source was the collection of 'Recruitment Lectures' written by C. M. Enriquez. These have been scanned are are available below for further reference and wider use.

Chapter 5: War and Independence

Many of the footnotes in this chapter relate to the data collected by the Kachin Veterans' Committee, Myitkyina, for submission to the Burma Forces Welfare Association. These materials cannot be made publicly available because of ethical concerns about the secondary uses of datasets. However, more analysis of the data as a whole will be published at the end of 2013 in South East Asia Research (http://www.ippublishing.com/sear.htm) in an article titled 'Ethnic Armies and Ethnic Conflict in Burma: Reconsidering the history of
colonial militarisation in the Kachin region of Burma during World War II'. This includes more detailed analysis of the data as well as a fuller outline of how the data was compiled.

(Graph showing the age at recruitment of men in the BFWA dataset.)

Chapter 6: Dimokrasi Prat to Rawt Malan!

A lot of the evidence used in this chapter was focused upon a series of lengthy interviews with 'Nhkum Naw' (a pseudonym). These interviews were not recorded. However, an important part of the argument of the chapter is that the Kachin region was much better informed politically than is typically assumed. There was a lively Jinghpaw language public sphere, both oral and in print including a Jinghpaw Press owned by L. Zau Bawm at 206, 32nd Street, Rangoon. Below are some samples from the Jinghpaw language newspaper Jinghpaw Prat (Jinghpaw Times), published in Rangoon (Yangon) and circulated widely among Jinghpaw speaking communities around the country, including in Yangon, Mandalay, the northern Shan States and in many military bases of the Burma Army where recruits into the Kachin Rifles were posted. The newspapers (although incomplete and rather poorly scanned from the original) demonstrate the range of news items that were included from across Asia and beyond, as well as incisive discussions about politics at the national centre and the meaning Dimokrasi ('demokrasi').

Chapter 7: Violence

Please see the separate page on the manau for audio and visual documentation of the event referred to in this chapter.

Dispersion plots of the terms Wunpawng and manau in a ritual recitation

The above dispersion plots show the dispersion of the terms Wunpawng (top) and manau (bottom) in the Zahpu Bum Mu nat dumsa recitation referred to in chapter 7, pp.342-3. (Plots made using Wordsmith Tools software. My thanks to Dr Justin Watkins at SOAS for his assistance which enabled me to develop this analysis.)

Images from the KIA manau at Laiza in February 2008

Below is a small collection of images taken by a local photographer at the manau held in the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army in Laiza on February 5th 2008 (this date marks 'Revolution Day' in Kachin ethno-nationalist narrative or the formal start of the uprising against the Burmese military regime). The images indicate the organisational and military scale of some of these local armed movements, which is referred to throughout the chapter. For more images, please see the related manau page on this site.

Chapter 8: Virtue

The arguments in this chapter are based on a cumulative study of the intersections of popular Burmese Theravada Buddhists practices in relation to nat,autochthonous spirit practices in Jinghpaw and observation of contemporary Christian communities particularly focused upon the Kachin Baptist Convention. The points made can be explored by considering many of the resources presented in this website. For issues of translation and intra- and inter-cultural translation, please see the translations presented on the pages Lanyi and Tsu Dumsa, where extended texts are available (some out of the outputs from the long translation process described at points in the book).

Chapter 9: Transnational Symbols in National Spaces: the Ideological Transformation of the Manau

Because of the range of material that has been used to inform the arguments of this chapter, a separate page of this website has been developed to present the material used in researching the manau. Readers are advised to look there for more detailed information.